


Glass Tempest

by beeftony



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 01:21:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8125033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeftony/pseuds/beeftony
Summary: A moment of quiet reflection. Spoilers for the latest episode.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This work contains spoilers for the latest episode of Critical Role that aired September 22nd, 2016. If you're not caught up, don't go any further.

Growing up in Whitestone, there were relatively few things that could divert Percy’s attention from his various tinkerings. His older siblings got all the lessons, people rarely paid him any mind, and the world outside was bleak and grey, hardly worth looking at even from a window.

Unless, of course, the travelling theatre was in town.

It was a tradition that began before he was born. Whatever wandering band of entertainers passed through Whitestone was extended an invitation to perform in the castle itself, in front of the entire De Rolo family. There were productions to suit all tastes: comedies, dramas, tales of whimsy, fantasy, and escape from the dreariness of real life.

What captivated young Percival most, however, were the tragedies.

The formula was simple. The protagonist of the play would be visited by some hardship, threatened with a foreboding prophecy, or extend himself past his own limits. The events would play out, dialogue would be spoken, soliloquies delivered, and while the meat of each play seemed different on the surface, the skeleton remained largely unchanged.

In the end, the protagonist was always the cause of his own doom. The circumstances didn’t matter; they were but a hundred masks all covering the same face. In a tragedy, the protagonist would always meet perdition on the very road he took to avoid it.

All of which was only _slightly_ amusing as Percy fell unconscious for the third time, assailed by metaphors.

The island of Glintshore was a metaphor. Some long forgotten event in its past had hardened the sand into rough, jagged, sharp glass that was constantly cutting, cutting, cutting, harming anyone who dared to come close. The black glass was like oil, reflecting images without clarity, without subtlety, but with a kind of twisted truth to it.

Orthax was a metaphor. A being of pure shadow, capable only of revenge, unable to think outside that paradigm. Single-minded in all the best and worst ways. Percy had to wonder if part of him had rubbed off on Orthax while they were bonded. Previously the shadow demon had been content to play puppetmaster, but now he displayed a drive that was _intimately_ familiar.

Anna Ripley was a metaphor. A dark reflection of all his accomplishments, taking everything he’d ever made and using it to murder him. A reminder of the person he could have become.

He had been arrogant. He had been a fool. He had been the architect of his own destruction.

Choosing not to kill Ripley back in that cell in Whitestone wasn’t the mistake. Nor was taking his eyes off of her to rush in and save his sister from Vax’s half-cocked rescue attempt. Nor was his decision to focus on other matters, believing that Ripley would simply stay as far away from him as possible and never trouble him until he finally found her on _his_ terms. The truth was something he had always known, but hadn’t acknowledged until now.

He simply wasn’t willing to go as far as she was to achieve what he wanted.

For every step Percy took into the darkness, she was always three steps ahead, laughing down the black hallways of oblivion. Good and evil didn’t figure into it: he had ingenuity, but Ripley had _will_. She was less a coward and more an opportunist, on a level that he could never match. Not without losing himself completely.

He had thought that maybe they could get through this, just barely, in spite of the fireball that knocked them down at the beginning of the fight, triggered by a bullet _he_ fired. In spite of his frustrated insistence that this was _funny_ , that he wasn’t fighting for his life, that this really would end in their victory. Vox Machina always protected their own.

This wasn’t the first time one of them had died in battle. Pike’s resurrection came at the cost of a stressful night and left her changed, but they prevailed. Grog had the very soul sucked from his body on two separate occasions, and continued to carry on as though nothing happened, experiencing the world through a blissfully simpler lens than the rest of them.

Vex had died after the battle was over, and fate pushed her brother in a direction that could prove positive one day. He was to blame for that, and had hoped that encouraging the others not to trust him could stop him from doing more harm. As if things actually worked like that.

But this time was different. This time, they couldn’t go to a temple, not that any god would take mercy on him anyway. They didn’t have a Cleric. Keyleth, their fastest means of transportation, was exhausted. One by one, their options had been cut off, until all that remained was the path ahead of him.

It wasn’t even the first time that chasing a Vestige of Divergence had nearly cost them everything. But this would not end with Grog descending from on high, axe held above his head, to cleave his opponent in two and end the fight. There was no grand heroic moment. This was not that kind of story.

In his final moments, his thoughts did not gravitate towards what he had always suspected they might. There was no mourning over what he had yet to accomplish, no lamenting all the things he never got to say to his friends. He’d said them already. He didn’t dwell on how much he probably had this coming, having cheated death so many times before. He thought only of those evenings spent with his family, watching some poor soul damn himself with his arrogance.

And then he thought nothing at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes fanfiction is a good way of getting across thoughts that I have trouble expressing in a simple blog post. This reflects a lot of my personal interpretation of Percy's journey the last few arcs, and your mileage may vary.


End file.
